CO L L A B O R AT I O N
43
CHANGE THE
CHANNEL,
CHANGE THE
WORLD
IT’S TIME FOR A SHIFT IN MEDIA TO MEET THE SHIFT IN CONSCIOUSNESS.
This is all mainstream now. Billions
of us have shifted. We – and not
only Millennials – are increasingly
becoming more discerning consum-
ers, more active, global citizens, and
more conscious about balancing the
money and the mission. It’s time for
us to demand our representatives
and informants become our agents
of change in the shifting world we
are catalyzing. It’s time for those of
us within the industry of influence to
become those changemakers, our-
selves. Some of us have been media
disruptors when it wasn’t so fash-
ionable. We were called rebellious.
Even fools. The media establish-
ment told us music wasn’t meant to
be watched and that nobody would
want their MTV when we launched it.
The traditional entertainment com-
munity said that there was enough
kids programming on PBS and
Saturday mornings when we created
Nickelodeon. That it was a sin to
air R-rated movies during the day,
when we started all movies, all the
time with The Movie Channel. And
that a more positive, pro-social and
thoughtful channel like A&E wouldn’t
work. Although there’s no more “M”
in MTV, and the “A” and “E” are all
but gone from A&E, these networks,
and others – equally criticized at
their inception – including CNN, HBO
and Discovery – greatly impacted
pop culture, the media and enter-
tainment industry and the lives of
billions.
Through all of the doubt and crit-
icism, there were companies like
Getty Oil, Warner Communications,
American Express, ABC, NBC, Hearst
Corporation, TCI, BET and Time-
Life who were brave and visionary
pioneers.
And individuals including Chuck
Dolan, Steve Ross, Ted Turner, John
Lack, Bob McGroarty, Jack Schneider,
Herb Granath, Ray Joslin and John
Hendricks - those who believed in
new ideas, new financial models and
taking risks - became global media
changemakers who had an unimag-
inable impact on society and set the
bar high for leaders of tech compa-
nies like Facebook, Google, Uber,
Amazon and Ebay who followed.
And then, the inevitable, yet not
unexpected, happened.
Over the years, bigger, fatter, greed-
ier public companies acquired
these once-independent and for-
merly super-creative assets and
assembled their portfolios to fuel
their quarterly profits. Part of the
result of this overall industry trend
was that Cronkite-era loss-lead-
ing journalism learned how to be a
(big) profit center and lost its way.
TV Programming departments (like
their future software counterparts)
became “me-too” cloning organiza-
tions of copy-cat TV series.
Reality television, once somewhat
unique, became fake entertainment.
Deeply, well-funded, star-studded
new networks that promised some-
thing more meaningful and different
fell into seas of off-network, off-mis-
sion reruns. And, much of “news”
has become a disgrace. Now, I’m
the first to admit that each stage of
media and entertainment – broad-
cast, cable, VOD, streaming and con-
nected TV has brought better and
better options. Better choice, con-
venience and control and higher
LEAD | January 2018